Assessment shows Bonney Lake’s art community lacking leadership
Published 12:46 pm Saturday, November 21, 2009
By Daniel Nash
The Courier-Herald
The Pierce County Arts Commission gathered to discuss the state of the arts community in Bonney Lake Thursday.
The session took place at the Bonney Lake library and included representatives from county government, city government and consulting firms, along with local artists and art educators.
The panel was one of several hosted in cities throughout Pierce County. Pierce County hired Advisarts and WolfBrown, consultants out of Seattle and Cambridge, Mass., to determine the economic benefits of the arts and the county’s role in fostering an arts community.
Claudia Bach of Advisarts offered the company’s assessment of the presence of the arts in Pierce County.
The assessment for Bonney Lake, after discussion by the panel, was that the arts are largely decentralized in the community and lacking in direct government support. Bonney Lake does not have a dedicated arts commission, for example, said Bonnie Egbert, the chair of the Pierce County Arts Commission and organizer of the panel.
This could be a problem for generating city dollars and economic stimulus, she said.
“If I go to Boston, I don’t go there to see the sidewalk or sewer system,” she said. “I might pay for those things with my taxes – gladly, I might add – but as a tourist I go to see the local arts and museums.”
In determining areas of focus, consultants identified three categories:
• Arts, which can include visual, literary and performing arts,
• Culture, which could include ethnic populations such as Bonney Lake’s established Ukrainian population, and
• Heritage, which is centered around local history.
The heritage category gained ground in Bonney Lake recently with the Historical Society’s placement of markers at nine historic landmarks. Panel attendee L. Winona Jacobsen was on hand for that success.
But the arts have not made similar ground recently. One of the only displays of public art in Bonney Lake is the statue of a boy by the city welcome sign, seen when driving up the hill on state Route 410. The statue is a product from a time when Bonney Lake still had a dedicated arts commission. The sculptor of the statue, Larry Anderson, was in attendance at Thursday’s panel discussion.
“The entrance sign was a result of the Bonney Lake Arts Commission, and whether that’s gone or still exists informally, I don’t know,” Anderson said. “But I haven’t heard anything for a long time after the sculpture went up. Other sculptors’ work appears periodically, but it’s hard to get an idea of what’s going on. Visual arts is a pretty solitary endeavour.”
“Well, I’m really big into getting things out to the public,” Joan Bolen said.
Bolen is the director of the Lake Tapps Community Theater. The theater has had trouble building community participation, notably with a recent production of “Little Women.”
On a recent trip to the grocery store, Bolen ran into a young mother and her children and let them know about the theater. The mother expressed pleasant surprise at finding out about a local theater, but Bolen never heard back from her in regard to entering her children for an after-school activity, she said.
“That’s the problem with our homegrown arts endeavors,” Bonney Lake Community Services Director Gary Leaf said. “Community plays have trouble finding local actors. When we get actors, they’re imported from other surrounding towns. Maybe I’m cynical, but it seems the people around here want to be entertained, but they don’t want to participate.”
In terms of visual arts, John Hilding, a retired professor of the Art Institute and original planner of Bumbershoot, suggested that sculptors could erect displays in parks and bike trails, whether they be commissioned displays condoned by the city or technically illegal works overlooked by the local government.
The option would raise arts awareness, but be vulnerable to vandalism, he said.
No clear answers were found in the meeting. Bolen suggested starting an unofficial arts commission then and there.
Advisarts and WolfBrown will continue to refine their document assessing the county’s role in local arts, but Bach emphasized there was no obvious first step in raising arts awareness. A Bonney Lake Arts Commission may be a good fit, but it might not, she said.
“What we see with a neighbor like Sumner is a town the third of the size of Bonney Lake with a much deeper history, as a town and with the arts,” Bach said. “If Bonney Lake chooses to become more involved with the arts, it will have to find its own path to that goal.”
